Law School Alumna Janet Stocco ’03
found her future calling while teaching in a Houston inner-city
school under Teach for America, a program that places outstanding
college graduates in low-income rural and urban communities.
Leaving her doctoral work in genetics at Harvard behind for two
years, she discovered she loved teaching, but to her dismay found
that teachers are given little respect outside and sometimes
even inside the classroom. More importantly, teachers can not
make substantive policy-based decisions that affect a broad swath
of students. But “people
pay attention when you have ‘J.D.’ after your name,” she
said — and she wanted people to pay attention to what she
had to say.

A few years, an M.A., and J.D. later,
policymakers’ ears
better perk up. Stocco was recently awarded the Skadden Fellowship,
one of just 25 given each year by law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom to graduating law students and outgoing law
clerks, which she will use to work for the Education Law Center
in Philadelphia on issues affecting Pennsylvania’s foster
children. The Fellowship was established to honor public service
work and offers fellows $37,500 plus benefits for one year, with
the expectation that it will be renewed for a second year.

Past fellows have provided legal services to the poor, elderly,
homeless, and disabled; fought for human rights and civil rights;
and worked on economic development and community renewal, according
to the firm.

Stocco, currently a law clerk for the
Honorable Carolyn Dineen King, Chief Judge for the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said she was amazed she received
the award, and excited to begin her work at the Center in the
fall. “I’m
going to continue working on education issues, but from a lawyer’s
perspective,” she said.

The Education Law Center works to promote
children’s access
to education rights, protect rights to special education, and
find solutions to education issues affecting low-income students.
As a law student Stocco researched for the Center on a pro bono
basis, but as a Skadden Fellow she will directly advocate for
clients, something the policy think tank doesn’t usually
have the staff for. “This does require one person at a
time to help each kid out,” she said. Her advocacy experience
will likely inform the Center’s policy work as well. “They’ll
have information on where the kinks in the system are that need
to be worked out,” she said.

Stocco once considered specializing in
patent law because of her background in genetics, but “I had a strong desire
to become a child advocate before coming to law school … [and]
working in the Child Advocacy Clinic really cemented my goals.” She
recalled one heart-rending case close to graduation that weighed
on her decision to pursue a public service career — one
of her clients was put into foster care, and there was a dispute
over her special education needs, but the mother had moved away
and couldn’t advocate for her child. After taking the clinic, “thinking
of doing anything else was just depressing.”

Stocco, a former Virginia Law Review Executive
Editor, credits Public Service Center Director Kimberly Emery ’91
for supporting her goals and telling her about the Virginia Loan
Forgiveness Plan, which pays off loans for those working in public
service. “You can actually be a child advocate and not
go bankrupt,” she said.• Reported by M. Wood